Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2016/03/should-the-east-river-pepsi-cola-sign-be-landmarked/
An editor at the New York Times invited me to write an op-ed on the proposed landmarking of the East River Pepsi-Cola sign, but then said:
We’re not going to use this. People really love that Pepsi sign so much that they don’t want to hear arguments against it.
So I offered it to the Daily News. I’ve written for it before. Its editors are highly professional and a pleasure to work with. And it goes to an audience to which I do not usually have access. See what you think.
The Long Island City Pepsi-Cola sign: Hazard, not landmark
BY MARION NESTLE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, March 10, 2016, 5:00 AM
Looks pretty. Tastes sweet. Has ugly side effects.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I read that the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission had deemed the Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City, Queens, so worthy of permanent preservation that it was considering it for landmark status.
Granted, the neon monument has been part of the East River landscape for the past 80 years. And yes, there is precedent for landmarking a sign rather than a building. Pine Bluff, Ark., chose to landmark a McDonald’s sign, and Cambridge, Mass., preserved a Shell Oil sign.
But the fact is that the Pepsi-Cola sig…